Ask any question about EPFL courses, lectures, exercises, research, news, etc. or try the example questions below.
DISCLAIMER: The Graph Chatbot is not programmed to provide explicit or categorical answers to your questions. Rather, it transforms your questions into API requests that are distributed across the various IT services officially administered by EPFL. Its purpose is solely to collect and recommend relevant references to content that you can explore to help you answer your questions.
This lecture explores the role of symmetries in particle physics, focusing on the quark model to derive hadron wave-functions and introduce abstract concepts like color and QCD. It covers the SU(2) and SU(3) symmetry groups, crucial in particle physics, and explains why hadrons exist as mesons, baryons, or antibaryons. The conservation laws resulting from symmetries are discussed, leading to the concept of isospin and its properties. The lecture also delves into the flavor symmetry of the strong interaction, showing how quark flavors are treated equally. By combining quarks, the lecture illustrates how isospin and symmetry properties play a key role in defining baryon wave-functions.